Page 9 of Mating Her Dragon

Not because he was controlling. Because he was terrified of losing her, and terror had a way of dressing itself up as strategy.

Garrett made himself breathe. Made himself ask the only question that actually mattered, instead of the twelve that didn't.

"Do you want to stay?"

Sydney looked at him– really looked, the particular look she gave him when she caught him doing something difficult and wanted him to know she'd seen it– and something in her eyes softened at the distinction he'd drawn.

"No," she said.

Garrett nodded once. "Then we go."

He called Carrick before they left Two Wolves, standing out on the back porch while Sydney packed, because some conversations a man had standing up, facing open ground. Carrick answered on the second ring. "Report." The renowned Dragon Leader was already halfway into command mode.

"Nothing urgent," Garrett said. "But you should know anyway." He laid it out clean and complete– the Ward repairing itself under Sydney's unconscious will, the resonance she'd felt through their Bond, the same shape of presence Kara had caught on the highway two days prior, far away and watching. Nothing about Leviathan's known activity. Nothing that changed anything Carrick and Ginnie already understood about Keevandrie or the residual trail on that trailhead.

Carrick was quiet for a moment on the other end. "You're sure it wasn't threat-adjacent?"

"Sydney's sure. Kara's sure." Garrett paused. "I trust both of them more than I trust my own instincts on this one."

"Fair." Carrick paused. "Where are you headed?"

Garrett looked out across the yard, toward the horizon, toward a direction that had nothing whatsoever to do with orders. "West."

"Mission?"

"No."

Silence stretched long enough that Garrett almost filled it. Then he didn't.

"The Pacific," he said finally.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then Carrick's voice came back low, and for the first time since Garrett had known him, something almost like warmth cracked through the command tone. "About damn time."

Garrett felt something in his chest unknot that he hadn't realized was still clenched.

"If you need me…" he started.

"I'll call," Carrick said, cutting him off clean. "Go see your ocean, son. Enjoy time with Sydney and traveling."

Garrett ended the call and stood there a moment longer, turning the words over. Go. Not report when convenient. Not pending further instruction. Just– Go. For the first time in longer than he could comfortably measure, duty had released him without him having to fight it for the privilege.

The Airstream still sat outside the hardware store when they walked back into town, gleaming as invitingly as it had the day before.

"Are you buying it?" Sydney asked. He saw her watching him circle it for the third time. "Or interrogating it?"

"I am determining whether it intends to kill us."

Garrett crouched to examine the undercarriage. Running a hand along the frame, he checked the welds, rust, and the axles with the same thoroughness he'd once applied to inspecting a garrison's defenses.

He kept going… Tires. Brakes. Electrical. The water system. The propane lines. Then came the roof seals, which he climbed to check personally while Sydney stood below with her arms crossed, visibly debating whether to be amused or alarmed.

"It's a camper, Garrett."

"That remains unproven."

But somewhere in the inspection, something in him shifted. It wasn't the objectively superior option– he had four spreadsheet rows proving that much. The point was that the RV was old. Genuinely old, in a way that had nothing to do with Garrett’s own centuries and everything to do with simple survival. Parts replaced. Seams resealed. Updated wiring running alongside original fixtures that someone, at some point, had cared enough to preserve rather than tear out.

He ran his palm flat along the cool, riveted aluminum of the siding and understood something about it without being able to say exactly what. It had been through things. It had been repaired, changed, rebuilt in places… And underneath all of it, it was still, unmistakably, itself.